Extract: On the Arcade Fire

Listened to Neon Bible last night, thinking, 'Oh, I haven't listened to Neon Bible in ages, I really want to.' But it was disappointing. The lyrics are terrible at times. Funeral, though, is irrepressible:

David Moore on Funeral:

Ours is a generation overwhelmed by frustration, unrest, dread, and tragedy. Fear is wholly pervasive in American society, but we manage nonetheless to build our defenses in subtle ways-- we scoff at arbitrary, color-coded "threat" levels; we receive our information from comedians and laugh at politicians. Upon the turn of the 21st century, we have come to know our isolation well. Our self-imposed solitude renders us politically and spiritually inert, but rather than take steps to heal our emotional and existential wounds, we have chosen to revel in them. We consume the affected martyrdom of our purported idols and spit it back in mocking defiance. We forget that "emo" was once derived from emotion, and that in our buying and selling of personal pain, or the cynical approximation of it, we feel nothing.

Even in its darkest moments, Funeral exudes an empowering positivity. Slow-burning ballad "Crown of Love" is an expression of lovesick guilt that perpetually crescendos until the track unexpectedly explodes into a dance section, still soaked in the melodrama of weeping strings; the song's psychological despair gives way to a purely physical catharsis. The anthemic momentum of "Rebellion (Lies)" counterbalances Butler's plaintive appeal for survival at death's door, and there is liberation in his admittance of life's inevitable transience. "In the Backseat" explores a common phenomenon-- a love of backseat window-gazing, inextricably linked to an intense fear of driving-- that ultimately suggests a conclusive optimism through ongoing self-examination. "I've been learning to drive my whole life," Chassagne sings, as the album's acoustic majesty finally recedes and relinquishes.

So long as we're unable or unwilling to fully recognize the healing aspect of embracing honest emotion in popular music, we will always approach the sincerity of an album like Funeral from a clinical distance. Still, that it's so easy to embrace this album's operatic proclamation of love and redemption speaks to the scope of The Arcade Fire's vision. It's taken perhaps too long for us to reach this point where an album is at last capable of completely and successfully restoring the tainted phrase "emotional" to its true origin. Dissecting how we got here now seems unimportant. It's simply comforting to know that we finally have arrived.

And Stephen M. Deusner on Neon Bible:

Like many indie artists, the Arcade Fire work best in the album format, and Neon Bible runs on a different-- and in some ways more finely tuned-- mechanical system than its predecessor. It's a shapely work, gracefully building to fall away to build again, as the band sustains a mood that's both ominous and exhilarating. Even "No Cars Go", which originally appeared on their self-titled debut EP, sounds more powerful here than it did in its previous incarnation. As stand-alone tracks, these songs don't make as much sense, which partly explains why those early leaks were so uninspiring. The danger here is inaccessibility: There's only one natural entry point to Neon Bible, and it's "Black Mirror". Everything afterwards flows seamlessly from that song's low rumble and startling imagery-- until the final track.

Venturing into the lyrical realm of Trent Reznor, album closer "My Body Is a Cage" seems too eager to wallow in the sort of pained melodrama that fuels the band's detractors. The real disappointment is that Neon Bible doesn't end with "No Cars Go", which easily achieves the release they artfully promise but playfully deny throughout the record's first nine tracks. Not only would it have ended the album on a more generous note, it would have made perfect thematic sense as a final invitation to escape.

Extract: Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

They awe us, these strange stars, so cold, so clear. We are as children whose small feet have strayed into some dim-lit temple of the god they have been taught to worship but know not; and, standing where the echoing dome spans the long vista of the shadowy light, glance up, half hoping, half afraid to see some awful vision hovering

And yet it seems so full of comfort and of strength, the night. In its great presence, our small sorrows creep away, ashamed. The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained face up to hers, and smiles, and, though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone.

Sometimes our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Night’s heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far beneath us, and, borne of her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier Presence than our own, and in the wondrous light of that great Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but the angels of God.

Only those who have worn the crown of suffering can look upon that wondrous light; and they, when they return, may not speak of it or tell the mystery they know.

NY holidays/ Portrait

NY holidays/ Portrait, originally uploaded by oarin.

This is by Oarin on Flickr, she's one of the best photographers I've seen on there. Deeply affecting photographs.

Extract: Ralph Waldo Emerson - 'One man's wisdom is another's folly'

One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom another's folly; as one beholds the same objects from a higher point. One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very remiss in this duty and makes the creditor wait tediously. But that second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself Which debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor? the debt of money, or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius to nature? For you, O broker, there is no other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys. Let me live onward; you shall find that, though slower, the progress of my character will liquidate all these debts without injustice to higher claims. If a man should dedicate himself to the payment of notes, would not this be injustice? Does he owe no debt but money? And are all claims on him to be postponed to a landlord's or a banker's?

(Trifling through old files: Summer 2006) Akiyo and the Aching Seas

It's fun to look back on old writing, you can kind of see if you're making any progress:

Akiyo sat looking across the bay. The night had an unusual tremor to the air, a wailing rose from beyond the horizon. Her hands were cold. She went inside to wash them in a sink of warm suds. Drying them, they were patchy and to touch the surface of her palm would whiten the skin. Mother and father were asleep, the chortling had stopped and the whisper of the bay washed throughout the rooms of the house. Akiyo drank fruit tea, spilling the steaming drink on the table, the cup stung her hands. She returned to the steps outside that looked out across the black sea. The wind wandered across the sand and fell in a heap below the dunes. The murmur of the night had increased, only intermittent now. A figure was lying in the glare of the moonshine on the white sand. Akiyo stepped down to the beach to see that it was a woman lying there, her eyes were closed. Akiyo touched the woman’s wrist which startled her, she sat-up:
“You scared me,” said the woman, checking Akiyo over.
“I thought you were dead,” Akiyo said, clawing her toes into the sand.
“I wish,” said the woman. Her hair fell about her shoulders as she sat up, she dragged her curls through her fingertips. Akiyo sat down next to her.
“What are you doing out here?”
The woman gestured out to the water, “it keeps me awake all night.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s not even that I mind. What do you think it is?”
“I think it’s the sea.”
“Silly, it’s the sea.”
“I think it’s what it has to say when it thinks no one is listening.”
The dark waves had made ground on the two while they were chatting, dragging closer toward their toes before receding with a scurry, back into the deep.
“I think it’s true,” the woman began, “that things are said but you aren’t listening, and that you don’t necessarily need to know.”
“You can only hear so much,” said Akiyo.
“You can’t know everything – like the sea – she knows everything, all she would need to know.”
“Nothing, then.”
“Nothing.”
The woman got to her feet, she said goodnight to Akiyo and disappeared beneath the dunes. Akiyo listened to the howling, she cupped a handful of the white sand, spilling it over her bare legs. The moon had crept beyond her head when she unplugged herself from the sand and went back into the house. Father was sitting at the kitchen table in his silk gown, he watched Akiyo come in. “Hello,” he said.
“It’s late,’ Akiyo replied. ‘I should be going to bed now, goodnight,” she was halfway up the stairs.
“Alright,” father said. “But it kept you up when you were a child, too, you know.”
“What did?” said Akiyo, stalling at the top of the staircase.
“The whales, they make that noise, passing in familial groups,” father approached the staircase. “It’s very complex.”
“They were singing?”
“One has died, or perhaps they’re in love.”
“Whales can’t love, that’s ridiculous.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“It was probably just the waves then.” Akiyo turned to move up the stairs.
“You don’t think that. I saw you in the sand.”
Akiyo paused. “My hands are cold again,” she said, putting her hands into the pockets of her dress.
“They’re such wise creatures.”
“Like you I suppose.”
“They must laugh.”
“Oh, so they laugh?”
“What’s wrong, Akiyo?”
Akiyo looked up through the box window to find the moon a droplet dangling in the oceanic night.
“My love, you aren’t yourself,” father cupped the head of the banister with his hands.
“I’m just tired. Goodnight father.”
Akiyo got into bed and listened to the windows being closed downstairs. Father’s bare feet were sucking against the kitchen linoleum, the house-doors clicked shut. The moaning sea could be heard muffled and suffocated by the walls, the rolling echo resonating into the obscurity of Akiyo’s sleep.

On British Rock Music

Perfect summary from Stuart Berman at Pitchfork:

As the band that provided the exclamation point to the post-punk revival of the early 00s, there was good reason to question Franz Ferdinand's current standing in the pop world, now that that trend is on the wane. However, as it turns out, their return is perfectly timed to remind us that, in a world where UK rock is so uninspired the Brits were forced to make superstars out of Kings of Leon, you really can have it so much better.

On British Rock Music

Perfect summary from Stuart Berman at Pitchfork:

As the band that provided the exclamation point to the post-punk revival of the early 00s, there was good reason to question Franz Ferdinand's current standing in the pop world, now that that trend is on the wane. However, as it turns out, their return is perfectly timed to remind us that, in a world where UK rock is so uninspired the Brits were forced to make superstars out of Kings of Leon, you really can have it so much better.

#10

Record Review: Telepathe - Dance Mother

V2/Co-Op
Release Date: 26/01/2009
In a Ragged Word: Fidgety
Rating: ***+ 3.5/5

In a recent interview with Ragged Words, Busy Gangnes told us that she thought it fine for Telepathe’s music to be considered peculiar. She said that Telepathe were attempting to instil a sort of ‘weirdness’ into their pop music. Never mind music critics getting their descriptions right, Busy’s right too. Consequentially, however, that could be a real turn-off for early listeners, and it would be a shame for someone to listen to Dance Mother just once before throwing it into a pile of itchy electro-pop, the kind pouring out of car adverts and mind-scraping myspace profiles.

Dave Sitek’s position in the producer’s seat is obvious enough from the fidgety nature of Dance Mother’s percussion – the tom toms are giddy things, running alongside plentiful, jarring 808 kicks. On first listen these bass drums can be a distraction, but in sight of the record’s wider whole it is part of a movement towards a plateau. The standout track here is ‘I Can’t Stand It’, and slowly building around a vocal loop it’s here that Sitek’s influence can be felt most keenly. The guitar part is steeped in enough reverb to mirror TV on the Radio’s awesome ‘Wolf Like Me’. But the TV on the Radio elements are felt also because there is an admirable level of restraint – Telepathe choose not to ride the song out on a gelid techno wave – instead they allow the bubbling to continue with a lovely, growing harmony lit by coiling steel strings. Here Telepathe find themselves akin to Deerhunter, rather than Ricardo Villalobos.

Fidgety is perhaps the perfect description for Dance Mother’s first half, but it’s all for good reason, at least it feels good. On the penultimate track ‘Trilogy: Breath of Life, Crimes and Killings, Threads and Knives’ Telepathe launch into a more effeminate Drum’s Not Dead-era Liars. The early fidgeting has found its zenith in a strange glitz that seems to tug at so many Hip Hop and experimental influences that this review could find itself studying Flying Lotus, instead.

There’s a lot to Dance Mother, opener ‘So Fine’ is single-material, and it is always playing in Brick Lane’s Rough Trade East. Busy’s endorsement of peculiarity will be a problem for some, but then that’s good, because it’s got much more to offer a patient ear. Telepathe are teething, but this is a good start. This debut is an early document of intelligent artists searching for their sound, and it’s certainly worth witnessing.

Daniel Greenwood

Interview: Talking to Telepathe

via Ragged Words

With Brooklyn duo Telepathe, pronounced 'Telepathy' as we were quick to find out, releasing their Dave Sitek-produced debut album next week, Busy Gangnes - one half of the intriguing pair alongside Melissa Livaudais - spoke to Ragged Words.

How is Dance Mother’s release shaping-up?

Busy: It was leaked on the internet back in the summer, so I think a lot of people have been downloading it from blogs, and so it’s sort of already out. It’ll be released in Europe and the UK on the 26th January, and then we have some touring to do. It seems a lot of people are writing about the record, which is cool. I’m really excited.

How do you feel about the album being leaked online, and the concept of downloading?

Busy: I don’t really think it’s a problem at all. I do it myself to find out about new music. Obviously it puts the record labels in danger, but it’s great that so many people have access to all this music for free, and if they want to buy a record then they can. I’m not bothered by it, actually I’m pretty excited about it.

What’s it like living in Brooklyn? It’s quite a diverse and creative music/arts scene.

Busy: I’ve lived in Brooklyn for a few years now and I feel like I’ve been lucky to see live so many interesting and innovative bands over the years. But this past year I feel like I’ve barely lived here, we’ve been touring, so I haven’t actually been out to any shows in Brooklyn. I feel like the scene has become so big that it’s almost overwhelming, I hear about a new band every single day. It can be a little overwhelming to check out and try out all these new artists, and to be a part of that scene. We haven’t actually played in Brooklyn for about six-months, perhaps since the summer because we’ve been touring so much. But we’re playing a really small show soon that should be really fun.

You’ve been compared to fellow-Brooklynites Gang Gang Dance on a number of occasions. Are you fans of them, or friends with them?

Busy: I would consider Gang Gang Dance our friends, though I’m a little surprised by that comparison because the way we write our music is very different. I always thought our music was very different to Gang Gang Dance, but maybe not for other people. We used to be on the same label as them, I performed with them for a month in another band I was playing with in 2005, called Bloodline. By touring with them you get to know each other. I don’t see them very often anymore, though, they’re very busy.

Which other artists in Brooklyn are you friends with?

Busy: I don’t know if you’ve heard of Kria Brekken, she’s really great, I try to see her every time she plays. I’m also friends with the High Places kids, but they moved to LA! Last night, I heard. Also, I don’t know if you’ve heard of Bunny Rabbit? We’re friends with them too.

Your I Am Sound bio says you ‘put down’ your instruments ‘in favour of the LCD glare of a computer screen’. Do you address the issue of the environment in your music? For example, a recent video and remix of ‘Devil’s Trident’ is filmed in leafy woodland, juxtaposed with the remix – a minimal techno soundtrack.

Busy: Our process used to be much more organic, our music used to be written as all of us together in a room jamming-out. We’re still using guitar pedals and stuff, but it never used to be very electronic at all. It was also the case that we didn’t have a practice space anymore, and at the same time we were into making music on a computer. We sat down and tried to keep things together in a natural way, as in the way we put together samples, the EQ, and programming. I do feel like we still embrace an organic facility in our music but at the same time using as much technology as is available to us. I think a lot of bands have shunned the electronic properties of music, and tried to make things sound completely live. But we try to meld the electronic and acoustic elements together.

In one feature, you said Telepathe’s songs were mainly ‘about love and death, the two extremes’. Can you elaborate on that?

Busy: We kind of have these apocalyptical themes and images in our music, and I’m not really sure where that comes from because we write our lyrics in a stream-of-consciousness style, passing across our ideas and editing them down. We’ll change a word to make it sound right, rather than for meaning. But about love, Melissa and I were in a relationship so typically the content was about our love for each other.

The NME described you as ‘the most intriguing band of 2008’, how was 2008 for you?

Busy: It was cool, but kind of intense. We got thrown into the touring schedule which was quite unexpected at the time. It was a bit of a whirlwind, but I had fun doing all the touring, we made it out to Australia and to Europe a couple of times. We got to release a couple of singles which people responded to pretty well. I’m looking forward to releasing our record this year and doing a lot more touring.

In January’s Observer Music Monthly you received a 4-out-of-5 star rating. The reviewer described your music as peculiar. How do you feel about that sort of description?

Busy: That’s great, and I think our music is peculiar. We write it in a kind of unconventional way, we’re kind of trying to sneak in this sort of weirdness amongst pop music, but I think it sounds acceptable. In calling us ‘peculiar’ they were probably right-on.

Words: Daniel Greenwood.

Dance Mother is released on V2/Co-Op on Monday, Jan 26 and will be reviewed later this week.

#9

Extract: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Gatsby's house was still empty when I left - the grass on his lawn had grown as long as mine. One of the taxi drivers in the village never took a fare past the entrance gate without stopping for a minute and pointing inside; perhaps it was he who drove Daisy and Gatsby over to East Egg the night of the accident, and perhaps he had made a story about it all his own. I didn't want to hear it and I avoided him when I got off the train.

I spent my Saturday nights in New York because those gleaming, dazzling parties of his were with me so vividly that I could still hear the music and the laughter, faint and incessant, from his garden, and the cars going up and down his drive. One night I did hear a material car there, and saw its lights stop at his front steps. But I didn't investigate. Probably it was some final guest who had been away at the ends of the earth and didn't know that the party was over.

On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer, I went over and looked at that huge incoherent failure of a house once more. On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight, and I erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. Then I wandered down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand.

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes - a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered on whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the old republic rolled under the night.

pp. 170-171, Penguin, 2000.

#8

#7

Animal Collective @ Koko via Ragged Words

Ragged Words

Hype is rarely a good thing, and this Ragged Words reviewer felt it badly. Animal Collective’s ninth studio album Merriweather Post Pavillion was new material to these ears, but the wonderful aspect of Panda Bear, Avey Tare and Geologist’s more soulful, poppy tracks is that they feel instantly familiar. And, tonight, so is the venue. AC played Koko only last May, and it appears that Camden feels like home for these fellows.

If there is a surprise element to this the first fixture of AC’s 2009 touring calendar, it’s that things start so slowly. ‘In The Flowers’ is something of a false dawn as the evening’s opener, Avey Tare gathers momentum with his signature jink and head bob but the pace just isn’t there. Sure, it’s gorgeous enough – the swelling of one note in particular pushes high, up and beyond the boxes of Koko’s amphitheatre – but it takes an hour before anything entirely interesting happens.

All complaints aside, all dropping of heads and gawping at watches, people reading text messages, twisting their necks to look up at Koko’s grand heights, it’s so worth the wait. The breakout begins with ‘Summertime Clothes’, that rampant synth loop is devastating in a live environment, the perfect intro for ‘Brother Sport’. Only one song – ‘Grass’ – has ever enraptured an AC concert like ‘Brother Sport’ does, fist-pumping and spot-hopping, finally! The trio disappear and return swiftly to perform Strawberry Jam’s superlative ‘Chores’, a skewered ‘Banshee Beat’, and perhaps the most addictive of Merriweather Post Pavillion’s hyped-tracks, ‘My Girls’. Everyone knows the words to this one – but the album only came out today, didn’t we all wait? Guess not.

It’s hard to feel let-down by Animal Collective’s slow approach tonight, because ‘Summertime Clothes’ and ‘Brother Sport’ swallowed up everything in that transient, numinous, words-failing kind of way. Thank God for Animal Collective.